Create a web page
as link-target on your web server, which is not linked from any other source.
Include a link to this page in your newsletter and you can gather statistic
information, like e.g. geo-location, number of unique users, ... but you
cannot say who has clicked on it. The privacy of your members is not at
risk.

"Open-Rates" measures how often someone has "opened"
the message - (clicked on the message to open it). Most todays mail clients
show the message content on the right-side of the application window, so
its most unlikely that someone will really click on it - to open the message.

Today "Open-rates" means the message was displayed in the
mail client, which does not mean much, the message will be displayed even
if someone just selects a message to delete it or mark it as spam.

Another problem is, that "Open-Rates" are typically based
on external images, which contain a "secret" tracking code (web-bug).

This information is completely inaccurate, because
most todays mail clients like e.g. MS Outlook, MS Windows Mail or Thunderbird
are blocking all external images for privacy reasons by
default. The tracking code will be downloaded by the mail client only if
the recipient has changed the privacy settings or has authorized the
sender.

If you want to measure the success of your email campaign,
then you should use use the "Click-through" statistics
instead, which will give you detailed information on how many recipients
have clicked on a link in your email.